this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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I can provide a counterexample. Orbán's fascist kleptocracy in Hungary ended through voting from a coalition of leftwing progressive, centrist and conservatives. And maybe a little sprinkle of J.D. Vance. So perhaps other tools like rioting have worked before and have had better success rate, but voting is a tool in democracies too, that isn't mutually exclusive from the others.
Voting is a tool in a democracy. The american government is doing everything they can do to make sure you never have to vote again.
Also, with hundreds of cases where autocracy was defeated through violence, and bringing up 1 example where voting was successful isn't exactly inspiring.
It is a more recent example than any of the others, so even if it's just one case, it's worth highlighting as a counter to OP's posting spree suggesting that voting isn't effective.
I already said that voting isn't mutually exclusive from violence or anything else. The process of it takes a couple hours out of one or two days, the primary and election day to go stand in line, or to order and mail your ballots. Technically speaking, even if in the USA's case the state can jail and disenfranchise you, chances are getting a conviction will take a while.
Has it actually ended the fascist kleptocracy, or has it just replaced which party is doing the grifting?
To me the promises and policies and the ideology of Magyar are eerily similar to what Orbán's been doing when he was starting out in politics.
https://www.budapesttimes.hu/hungary/magyar-submits-sweeping-constitutional-reform-package-to-parliament/
Here you go, a few reforms that many Americans have been asking for:
In consultation with the people of Hungary, lessons were learned and changes were made to help prevent Fidesz or others (including his own party Tisza) from taking the country hostage again.
Voting can be a tool, but not really beyond cases like Hungary where it has been allowed to persist for long enough that the autocatabolic nature of fascism burns out the population at large (so pretty much allowing it to run its course, with some limits imposed by the EU in this case) and not having the ability to look for fuel beyond their borders.
Fine if the spread of the fires can be contained in such ways, not much use for more than ruling over the ashes otherwise.
Edit: To clarify, it requires these conditions (the former to be effective, the latter to actually matter) because otherwise the people who cannot be compelled to do anything beyond voting will just meekly sit by as the vote gets ignored anyway, so long as the fascists have enough of some form of power to maintain the momentum to do so.
You make a good point, and I think America is in the process of burning through large amounts of people who thought fascism would do anything good for them, though I don't know how advanced that is and it may not be as far as Hungary at this point in time. There are enough similarities between the USA and Hungary's cases with the gerrymandered electoral process, constitutional 2/3s requirements to revert the skewed rules, appointed cronies to lead many government bureaus, a captured media environment, for me to believe that the path to reverse them through democratic means is possible.
(Personal opinion follows) I'm not advocating for people to vote then wipe their hands of the matter. People should go protest and riot before or after as they like. Though I think that organized non-violent movement building is the most effective tool for this situation, and people are taking action on issues like blocking AI data centres and taking down surveillance dragnet cameras (which sometimes the media portrays as violent but to me that's non-violent). Once a movement is large enough it can start to bear its teeth, with little bits of threatened or targeted disruptive repercussions against acts of injustice, and not everyone has to be violent to participate. If the vote is not respected, that is the ideal time to riot. Even if a Democrat takes power in 2029, that's not the time to shut up, protests should continue so that leaders know what people think are injustices that extended beyond Trump's rise, and would spur government to action to address more than surface-level changes. Legislating away Citizens United, impeaching the Corrupt Supreme Court or expanding it, ending oil and coal handouts, expanding the House, taxing the wealthy, enacting Universal Healthcare and a Universal Basic Income, just to name a few.
That all hinges on them feeling too insecure in their institutional power (particularly military and police, where they have relative popularity) to manipulate the vote without consequence- likely by eroding it through continuing with the same kinds of action and harming yet more people in the meantime.
I am also pretty doubtful of the chances of whomever ends up in power next, upon being handed the machinery of state, actually makes the fundamental changes necessary to get away from the underlying causes that led us here, and honestly your wishlist doesn't either (the results stem from the particular systems and power structures at work, if we don't address them at their root then we haven't done anything, and since this includes the very structures that state political power relies upon...), but those are really only secondary points.
I hope that I didn't imply that you were advocating for that, I was trying to speak purely to the point being made without any assumptions beyond.
No worries, it's a good discussion. I share the concern about putting all the eggs in the "vote blue and things will go back to normal" basket, because that is far from guaranteed to work or sufficient. I didn't get the impression you were painting me in any camp, but I wanted to clarify my position to pre-empt any conclusion jumpers.